The cult of celebrity is the barn-door target of Mark Anthony Green’s inventive but frustrating first horror film. Ayo Edebiri plays Ariel Ecton, a junior journalist who’s an unlikely invitee to the compound of a reclusive pop star, Alfred Moretti (John Malkovich), for the launch of his first album in 30 years.
Any hope of a scoop is dashed by her gleefully misogynistic editor-in-chief, Stan (Murray Bartlett), who demotes his Gen Z underling to notetaker. She will do the legwork while he cavorts with a select group of peers: the talkshow host (Juliette Lewis), the influencer (Stephanie Suganami), the paparazza (Melissa Chambers) and the estranged chum (Mark Sivertsen).
Undeterred by her boss’s dismissiveness and the efforts of her assigned minder (a hilariously surly Amber Midthunder), Ariel goes sleuthing around the remote Utah ranch, where Moretti has surrounded himself with religious followers known as Levellists. They wear blue, practise tai chi and archery, raise smiling children and talk about “balance”. Ariel remains unnerved by the cult and suspicious of her host.
Opus is less than the sum of its parts. There are lovely, indelible details, including a lonely red yurt where Levellers shuck oysters until their hands bleed in search of a pearl. Tommy Maddox-Upshaw’s cinematography, Robert Pyzocha’s production design and Shirley Kurata’s costumes are outlandishly gorgeous.
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Malkovich – no better man – makes for a gregarious and creepy nut job. His hip-thrusting alone is worth the price of admission. Boppy tunes written by Nile Rodgers and The-Dream allow us to believe that the American actor might have been a 1990s pop sensation.
But it speaks volumes that after Moretti’s final monologue – in a film overburdened by expositionary blah-blah – we’re left scratching our heads. More surprisingly, Green, a former contributor to GQ magazine, has written a wholly unconvincing reporter heroine. Edebiri works hard, but her notebook-clutching Nancy Drew asks dimwitted questions, even after the guests start to “disappear”.
